Less than two months into the Trump administration, the harsh and bombastic rhetoric of the campaign is in full swing and fruition.

Nowhere is this more blatantly on display than in the immigration policy. The New York Times reports that Trump is putting into practice the language that he used on the campaign trail, expanding the definition of “criminal aliens” who pose a “threat” to people in the United States to include virtually all undocumented immigrants.

Last week, the administration expanded the freedom of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to arrest and detain anyone they view as a “risk to public safety,” opening the floodgates for racial profiling. Local police officers and sheriffs will be allowed to act as immigration enforcers. Meanwhile, the unconstitutional travel ban launched in January, which focused primarily on seven mainly Muslim nations, is set to be re-released soon in what critics are calling “Travel Ban 2.0.”

Lost underneath the headlines is what all this means to the larger Black community in the U.S. We are here to tell you that much is at stake, and now is not the time to be silent or shy about it.

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Marc Bayard is an associate fellow and the director of the Black Worker Initiative at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Nia Nyamweya works with the Black Worker Initiative and Criminalization of Poverty projects at the Institute for Policy Studies.